The FiiO X Series is a line of portable music players designed and manufactured by the Chinese company

FiiO Electronics Technology FiiO Electronics Technology Company, Ltd., or simply FiiO, is a Chinese electronics company founded in 2007 that primarily manufactures audio equipment. Its products include portable music players, audio amplifiers Audio most commonly refers to ...

Models

* All models support digital audio sampled up to 192 kHz with samples of up to 24 bits. * All models support the lossless audio formats

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

, ALAC, Monkey's audio (APE), WMA Lossless, and WAV. * All models support the lossy audio formats

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York * American Aviation, a company from Cleveland, ...

, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and WMA. * All models support gapless playback and hardware (non DSP) bass and treble controls.

Reception

In reviewing the FiiO X3,

LA Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

' music critic Mark Swed concluded it is a better alternative to an

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

. Swed noted that the X3 utilizes that same digital-to-analog converter that is found in much more expensive players, such as Astell & Kern models that are being sold for $699 and $1,299. In his opinion the FiiO X3 may not have A&K’s sweet and open sound, but it could be purchased for around $200 as of April, 2013. Steve Guttenberg of

CNET ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

compared the FiiO X5 to the Apple iPod Classic and the not-yet-released

PonoPlayer PonoPlayer is a portable music player created by Neil Young's company, PonoMusic, as the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Development and release In September 2012, Neil Young appeared on the ''Late Show with David Letterman'' with ...

. He found the "iPod sounded vague and blurry next to the pristine X5" when playing identical ALAC audio files. The review also noted that the PonoPlayer plays fewer formats than the FiiO X series players, but costs more than the X3. A review of the X3 in ''Hi-Fi World'' reported that the sound and amplification are good, but added that the interface was "least intuitive" and "inelegant." The conclusion was: "a fine budget starting point in high-resolution digital."

X1

The X1 features physical buttons and a spin wheel which "clicks" when rotated. Each "click" of the wheel moves the selected item up or down. There are three buttons on the side of the device, one is used to power up/down the device and put it in sleep mode, while the other two raised buttons function for volume. In addition, when in sleep mode and playing music, the volume up/down buttons can be used for skipping a song or going back a song in the selected album/playlist.

References

{{reflist Digital audio players